History and Background

This is the eczema treatment of a patient with the most severe eczema I have ever seen or heard of in the 30 years I have been practising.

The subject, so formal, is an Eczema Suffering 40-year-old female. She, like many other eczema suffers, had other autoimmune diseases during her early life such as asthma. a very common problem in the developed world. (See a study called “The Dunedin Report” on Curiosity Channel, I will write an article about it soon, but don’t hold your breath). That report came up with the Hygiene Hypothesis. This states that children not exposed to particular microorganisms (such as gut flora ) will develop autoimmune diseases.

She did, as many children do, finally “grow out” of asthma. The “grow out” part is in reality acquiring the necessary probiotics to activate the regulatory response of the immune system.

Her father is a surgeon and, this is pure speculation on my part, but I would imagine a very clean house. Pure speculation. But all mothers reading this should allow their children and babies to get dirty, play in the sand and have pets. One paediatrician quoted in the Curiosity Stream documentary would ask the new mother if she had a dog. If she said no he would recommend a stop off at the nearest pet shop to get one, preferably two. Children who have pets especially dogs have a far stronger immune system. The Hygiene Hypothesis at work.

I do know that she has no pets and her daughter also has allergies.

• The firstborn drops its dummy and it gets sterilized.
• The second child drops its dummy, the parent wipes off the dirt and puts the dummy back in the babies mouth. 
• The third baby drops its dummy it is popped straight back into the babies mouth.

Start of the Eczema

Asthma slowly subsided. My take on this is the correct probiotics to stop the inflammation that is causing asthma were obtained during her childhood.

Whatever the reason she moved from asthma to eczema around 25 years of age.

Her first experience of bad eczema was at the beginning of pregnancy. At the time the doctor called it pregnancy eczema. and treated her with cortisone creams. The baby was born and eczema disappeared to a large extent. Just mild rash in the joint folds.

When she turned 36 eczemas started again in earnest.

It started on her face. She says she could feel eczema starting. She described it as serious sunburn. Her face swelled to such an extent she couldn’t open her eyes. By the time she got to the hospital, she was covered from head to toe.

She was going through a divorce, studying for a law degree and had just moved homes. To me, it seems that when she is under stress eczema breaks out. Stress puts a lot of strain on the immune system and with hers only partially working it led to the eczema outbreak. Eczema went from a mild rash in selected areas to a head to toe rash. It got so bad that her face become swollen, making it difficult to see.

After moving residence, another big stress in one’s life and a change to her environment, she had 3 eczema bouts that required hospitalisation all within 4 weeks. She would get up around 2h30 to study and on these occasions she woke to a swollen face, eyes as well impairing her vision.

Hospitalisation

So, at 36 she had her first trip to the emergency room. The original misdiagnosis was a food allergy, but after further investigation, the doctor decided it was eczema. Treatment was injectable cortisone and cortisone creams to apply as well as a recommendation to see a dermatologist. As it’s an ER you don’t expect a detailed treatment plan.

The swelling subsided due to the medication and she was discharged.

A few months later, at 37, she had another serve episode. and this time it was so bad the doctors admitted her into the hospital. After an overnight stay, she was discharged, only to be readmitted on a Friday one week later. Her face and eyes were swollen making it difficult to see.

The next day she was discharged.

The third hospital visit happened about 2 weeks later. She had her daughter with her so she wasn’t able to be admitted and she stayed in the emergency room.

It was suggested she get an allergy test so she went to the Allergy Diagnostic & Clinical Research Unit of the University Cape Town Lung Institute. The test showed allergies for dust and house mites, just about every autoimmune compromised patient has these allergies. Their advice was based on avoidance which is just about impossible.

She was told to get dust covers for pillows and mattresses, vacuum daily, steam clean the pillows and bedding daily. Please don’t follow this advice.

She was diagnosed with severe facial angioedema prescribed antihistamine and cortisone creams as well as prednisone, for emergencies. She was also given a daily antihistamine. Other creams, such as moisturises were also prescribed.

Conventional Eczema Treatments

I sometimes wonder at the treatments that “Specialists” prescribe. I think it is because they are focused on the symptoms of a disease and not on the cause. Maybe it’s the patient’s expectations that are to blame. The patient pays a lot of money and expects to get better now instead of a gradual but permanent solution.

If we look at the treatment so far, it has been purely symptomatic, treating the inflammation with creams, antihistamines and prednisone. There has been no attempt to find the cause, just blaming it on an allergy. Allergies are themselves autoimmune diseases. I think they got that part wrong as well. My reading of the problem was stress. 

1. Pregnancy, the body is under a lot of stress at that time. Both physical and emotional.
2. Divorce
3. Studying while also going through a divorce.
4. Moving house, after death, is the second most stressful situation we can encounter

I do not see find the cause of an allergy looking for the cause of the problem

The other treatment strategy they tried to use is avoidance. It is impossible to avoid dust and mites.

In fact the measures, excessive cleanliness, they recommended aggravate the condition not improve it. It destroys all probiotics in the environment.

Measures to Alleviate the Irritation

This problem of eczema was ongoing. About 2 years ago the company she worked for started renovating the offices. This lead to a huge increase in the dust in the air. The dust exacerbated her eczema.

Eczema progressed from dry to wet eczema, due to the increased inflammation caused by the construction dust in the air and infection of the broken skin.

It was particularly bad on her head, to the point she had a course in antibiotics for the infection on her scalp.

Her pillows would have blood on them due to eczema sores. To get to the scalp to apply the creams she started to shave her head and wear a bandana to cover her head. She looked like she was undergoing cancer treatment.

As a lady, you have to be really desperate to resort to shaving your head.

Another Hospital Stay

In July 2020 she was again admitted to the hospital for server atopic dermatitis or atopic eczema.

She would sleep about 18 to 20 hours with tests revealing a severely compromised immune system. Which is no surprise.

Treated again with cortisone injections and creams.

Meeting an Unconventional Pharmacists

Around that time she started to come to a pharmacy where I was working. I first thought she was a cancer patient. After talking over a few visits to the pharmacy I was able to find out that she was suffering from eczema on her head and that she had shaved her head. She told me about the treatment she had so far and showed me a file of her treatment and the test results.

I suggested she see a new dermatologist in Durban. As she was from Cape Town and didn’t know her way around she asked if I would take her. Which I did. I did have a hidden agenda though, I wanted to see and hear for myself what he was going to prescribe and what he would say.

After the examination, he sat down and reviewed the present treatment. He said he was going to treat the cause and she must stop the Prednisone.

I thought, here we go an enlightened doctor.

But no!

He prescribed, methotrexate, to suppress her immune system. Many autoimmune diseases, such as arthritis etc, use methotrexate. Immediately I thought, during a pandemic you are prescribing an immunosuppressant.

At the pharmacy, I dispensed the medication and warned her of the side effects. I also suggested a different approach, Noster ProBiotics. She wasn’t that keen and decided to follow the dermatologist treatment.

A couple of weeks on the treatment and she couldn’t continue. The methotrexate has terrible side effects so she stopped.

Instead of listening to me, she decided to see a different dermatologist.

Further Conventional Eczema Treatment

This dermatologist changed the medication to a different immunosuppressant, Azathioprine, but it had very similar side effects and again we are in the middle of a pandemic.

Finally, she decided to give my suggestion a chance. As I told her it does no harm, unlike the others.

Probiotic Eczema Treatment with Noster ProBiotics

Because of the severity of the condition and the weeks of immunosuppressants, we decided to double up on the dosage of Noster ProBiotics hoping to kick start the secondary immune system response, the regulatory response.

Fortunately, it had a great effect on her skin. Within a few days, the redness and the swelling decreased.

She no longer felt like a walking corpse, a side effect of the previous medication. 

She kept shaving her hair until I told her she could no longer do that. Luckily, the success so far persuaded her that I was on the right track.

Levels of stress and anxiety are her triggers. We cannot treat ourselves as chemical reactions, so I recommended some yoga to learn something called mindfulness, or being in the moment and not worrying about the past and the future. The past is done and cannot be reversed and you can deal with the future when it gets here. The yoga didn’t happen so I finally suggested exercising outdoors, running or walking. She is now an avid runner, participating in trail runs on the weekend. I suggested trail running because of the advantage of being closer to our caveman days. The probiotics we pick up from the outdoors on the trails are far better than those in built-up areas.

Outcomes To Date

So far she has been incredibly happy with the outcome and is allowing me to document it and sharing her journey from hospital treatment to trail running.

For her, she is sharing so that others can also benefit from this treatment. 

One just needs to look at the images further down the page to see the amazing transformation. By December her hair would have grown to a level that she will no longer need to hide under her bandana.

Conclusion

This has been one of the most satisfying stories for me personally. To be able to help someone go from a seemingly hopeless position to being normal has been a huge reward for me and a life change for her.

It is a huge journey from hospitalisation for eczema treatment to trail running in the bush!

That is the power of probiotics.

They are essential to many, many of your bodies systems.

Do not neglect them. 

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